CompTIA will launch a new member community to expand women’s IT career opportunities, it said Wednesday. Advancing Women in IT Community will commit to “empowering women with knowledge and skills necessary to help their pursuit of successful IT careers” and will provide resources, networking opportunities and member-driven programs, it said. It will serve members in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa, and its goal is to combat the decline in the number of women working in the IT industry. In 1991, 36 percent of the industry workforce was women, CompTIA said, and that number is down to 28 percent in 2012 and continues to decline.
Q4 point-to-point microwave equipment revenue grew 9 percent sequentially, said a report released Wednesday by Dell'Oro Group. Out of the three microwave technology segments, the packet-only radio segment had the highest revenue growth rate at 20 percent per quarter. Some 1.4 million radio transceivers shipped in 2011, representing about 700,000 microwave backhaul links, Dell'Oro reported. It forecast that number to grow 13 percent in 2012. Ericsson ranked as having the highest radio transceiver shipment share, with Huawei in second and NEC third.
The FCC Media Bureau gave a three-year extension to a waiver of its CableCARD rules sought by Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico and San Juan Cable, an order released Wednesday said. Each cable operator must file annual reports detailing its support and provision of CableCARDs, the order said. Last year, the bureau granted the same extension to Puerto Rico Cable Acquisition Corp. (CD Sept. 20 p13).
The retransmission consent system is outdated and the resulting blackouts harm consumers caught in the middle, National Taxpayers Union Vice President Andrew Moylan said Wednesday at the Institute for Policy Innovation summit. Moylan supported the deregulatory TV bills (S-2008, HR-3675) by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. The federal government should not have its “thumbs on the scale,” controlling how negotiations are done, Moylan said. Instead of “retinkering the scales,” the DeMint/Scalise legislation gets “rid of the hurdles.” The legislation is “not a silver bullet” and there will still likely be some arguments and blackouts, he said. However, Navigent Economics Managing Director Jeffrey Eisenach warned against “blowing up” the current system, which he said is working fine and doesn’t need fixing. Repealing it would force companies seeking to carry content to negotiate “an incredibly complex set of contracts” with the original content owners, he said. The DeMint/Scalise bills don’t propose “a movement to the free market” because retrans deals are already privately negotiated and the FCC’s job is only to enforce them, he said. Moylan said it’s doubtful the DeMint/Scalise legislation will pass during this Congress. The path to passage this year “is going to be difficult,” he said. “But I think it’s important that they've laid down this marker now.” DeMint’s possible ascension to chairman or ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee (see separate report in this issue) increases the chances of getting a “fair hearing” for the proposal, he said.
Dish Network needs to begin development of “unique S-band infrastructure and chipsets for its planned 100 percent LTE network” now, said Chairman Charlie Ergen during a meeting with FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and an aide (http://xrl.us/bmwic4). The agency should quickly grant Dish the transfers of control and waivers to allow it to offer terrestrial service in the S-band, said Ergen. Any concerns about 700 MHz spectrum interoperability should be addressed within a separate proceeding, he said.
Intelsat began selling its New Dawn Ku-band multi-channel per carrier media platform in Africa, the company said Wednesday. The new platform allows regional and international programmers to expand distribution of cable and direct-to-home services in sub-Saharan Africa, said Intelsat. It said Globecast will provide the ground and uplink services for the platform, which is based on DVB-S2 modulation and MPEG-4 compression.
USTelecom, CTIA and NCTA urged House and Senate leaders to spurn federal “top-down” cybersecurity regulations in lieu of industry best practices. Their appeal came in a letter sent Wednesday to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. It would be “disastrous” for Congress to adopt any plan that “slows industry response time to hostile cyber activity,” said the letter signed by NCTA President Michael Powell, CTIA President Steve Largent and USTelecom President Walter McCormick. “Shifting to a regulatory approach will divert resources and attention from deterrence to compliance with particular rules that will quickly become outdated,” the letter said. “Wherever possible, the government should rely on industry best practices to establish appropriate cybersecurity measures rather than impose prescriptive rules,” it said. The industry groups outlined six priorities that Congress should consider as it works to secure private and public systems from cyberthreats. In addition to avoiding federal cybersecurity mandates, lawmakers should promote “effective sharing of cyberthreat information” between the government and the private sector, it said. “Legislation that removes the current legal barriers to information sharing and establishes the appropriate safeguards for the use of such information would greatly improve cybersecurity.” The government should also update the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), promote cybersecurity investment, increase public cybersecurity awareness and ensure that all industry stakeholders have a role in cybersecurity defense, the letter said. Momentum for cybersecurity legislation has been building following the introduction of S-2105, the Cybersecurity Act, and the Strengthening and Enhancing Cybersecurity by Using Research, Education, Information, and Technology (SECURE IT) Act (see separate report in this issue). Separately, a spokesman for USTelecom said it’s unlikely that lawmakers will vote on cybersecurity legislation until the next congressional work period.
A nonprofit that’s had some encryption concerns wants the FCC to “act quickly to adopt final rules” for cable operators to scramble the basic tier “if it appears that Boxee and other similarly situated parties have had the opportunity to make their case.” Encryption rules should “strike the appropriate balance between keeping consumers who have purchased existing equipment whole, while simultaneously allowing for a swift transition to new technology,” Public Knowledge said. Makers of consumer electronics using clear QAM unencrypted cable signals and lacking CableCARD ports to get scrambled shows have opposed encryption. “There are real benefits associated with the conversion of cable to digital,” an official of the nonprofit reported telling aides to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. “Maintaining clear-QAM forever cannot be the only possible solution.” The cable and CE industries “ideally” “would come to a mutually acceptable transition plan” but “in the absence of such an agreement, the Commission must make a determination that reasonably balances the above considerations,” PK said. With no AllVid rules yet, which Public Knowledge wants the commission to propose and which CE companies seek, the agency “should consider the importance of facilitating new technologies attached to cable systems in the manner envisioned by Congress in the adoption of Section 629” of the Telecom Act, PK said. “The Commission has repeatedly observed that these devices can provide a valuable incentive to consumers to adopt broadband, can provide much needed competition for video-related services, and can vastly improve the user experience.” In issuing encryption rules, the Media Bureau may also start such a proceeding on ways to standardize home-networking ports on set-tops. The agency should use the same criteria applied to low-income households getting government-subsidized phone service to determine if they can get set-top boxes that cable operators pay (CD Feb 29 p18) for in encrypted, all-digital systems, the group said. Its ex parte filing was posted Tuesday to docket 11-169 (http://xrl.us/bmwh82).
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney alienates working people, Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen said Wednesday. The former Massachusetts governor “barely won the Michigan primary” Tuesday, Cohen said. “He’s had a hard time hiding his contempt for working people [and] supporting every possible attack on workers’ rights and bargaining rights."
CenturyLink’s petition for a limited waiver of the FCC’s new call signaling rules should be granted subject to certain conditions, said comments filed Wednesday by the National Exchange Carrier Association, National Telecommunication Cooperative Association, Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies, and the Western Telecommunications Association (http://xrl.us/bmwh7e). CenturyLink had requested waiver of the requirements to pass the Signaling System 7 (SS7) Charge Number (CN) unaltered where it differs from the Calling Party Number, the rules for originating service providers to pass the number of the calling party or CN in the Multi-Frequency (MF) Automatic Number Identification field, and the rules for providers that use SS7 or MF signaling “where CenturyLink acts as an IXC for certain traffic originated over dedicated access facilities” (CD Feb. 1 p13). “The Commission must be very mindful when considering waiver petitions of this type that they should be strictly limited in scope to a few instances involving ‘legacy’ technology that is neither SS7 nor Internet Protocol,” the group of rural associations commented. “The waiver should be contingent upon CenturyLink’s publication of a list of all originating legacy switch locations that would fall under this limited waiver so that terminating carriers can identify such calls, and CenturyLink should be required to provide terminating carriers with the translation table that indicates the originating call location for each ‘pseudo CN’ it inserts in certain call stream signaling."